Patricia McKenna Print E-mail

 

My work is concerned with how we shape and construct the world around us, creating meaning, politics, values, and emotions out of the physical space we inhabit. I am interested in our relationship to place, site, landscape but also how we create our own interior landscapes and how this duality finds expression and form in life and through art. One of the key elements for me in expressing this duality has been through the use of materials and site-specific work.
   
While the concerns and interests in my work have remained the same, having the time in MAVis to examine and explore ideas of research, narrative and theoretical ideas has impacted on my present work and approaches to site and materials. I am currently working on a public art commission for Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown County Council, which involves an ephemeral day-long intervention developed as part of a “real world” submission project in MAVis. Since leaving the course I have developed and expanded this work and I have drawn on the experience of listening to documentary filmmaker James Benning  discussing and showing his work in Documenta. This has directly influenced me in expanding my approach to documentation and rethinking the use of video in my work.